Devilman: The Demon Bird
Devilman: The Demon Bird is a 1990 OVA film based on Yasutaka Nagai's novelization of his brother Go Nagai's manga Devilman. It was directed by Umanosuke Iida and a sequel to his previous Devilman adaption Devilman: The Birth from 1987. Although the events in this OVA are based off of the second volume of the manga it also features the fight with Jinmen as a prologue sequence. The OVA was followed by a non canon spin-off, CB Chara Nagai Go World, in 1991 and later in 2000 an OVA based on the Amon manga was released, namely The Apocalypse of Devilman. It is written to follow the same series of the Iida films but takes place long after. Story One night at the Makimura residence, Akira Fudo receives an ominous phone call from his deceased mother and a demon who challenges him to a fight. Akira makes his way to the rendezvous point, an abandoned, rundown and partly flooded subway station, where he confronts the demon turtle Jinmen. Jinmen had been present at the murder of Akira's parents in the Himalayas, and had devoured his mother, thus causing her face to appear on the back of his shell, alongside those of other previously eaten humans. Enraged by the demon's sadistic actions, Akira turns into Devilman and fights Jinmen. At first, Jinmen gets the upper-hand since Akira is reluctant to attack because he would accidentally injure his mother in the process. However, Akira's mother encourages him to murder Jinmen by killing her as well, since she could never be human again and that she was no longer truly alive after having been eaten. Without a doubt in his mind Akira promptly murders Jinmen by bashing a hole in his shell, straight through his mother's face. With the fight over Akira turns back into his human form and laments over the event. Sometime after the encounter with Jinmen, Akira is experiencing a frightening nightmare. He is at the beach with Miki, until he comes across a mountain of ice which seems oddly familiar to him. Akira enters the mountain, wherein he discovers several demons, including Jinmen, frozen completely in ice. And at the center lies a massive demon of immense power that devours Miki and overwhelms Amon with fear. The following morning, Akira visits Ryo Asuka at the hospital, to inform his friend of the ominous dream he had just experienced. They are both surprised to discover that Ryo's seemingly mortal wounds had recovered in a matter of a few days. Even more surprising is the fact that Akira's personality seemed to have become far more aggressive and assertive, which Ryo attributes to the demon Amon's presence which influences Akira's mind. He assumes that Akira's nightmare must have been one of Amon's memories and that the giant demon which even Amon found frightening must have been the demon race's leader. This only furthers Ryo's skepticism over the possibility of defeating the demons, mostly attributed to the demon's existence as being the natural predators of the human race. Since human beings had no known predator and had ravaged the planet through pollution, overpopulation and resource depletion, the demons's attacks would seemingly work to balance out the food chain by reducing the number of humans. But despite this claim, he encourages Akira further on his mission to save the human race since survival was just as much part of nature as was hunting: humans having te right to defend themselves and devilmen were the answer to the humans' salvation. Later that night, Akira is woken up yet again from a nightmare, but is comforted shortly after by Miki. After a brief exchange of banter between the two of them, Miki goes to the bathroom to take her daily shower. In the meantime, Akira begins sensing the presence of a nearby demon. True enough, the demon bird Sirene flies over the Makimura residence. Despite her insecurity, Sirene musters up the courage to confront Devilman, even though Akira possessed Amon's power, considered to be the most ferocious of the demons. She has fellow demons, Agwel and Ghelmer, invade the house. Agwel uses his power to imprison Kozo and Akiko Makimura inside the floors of the house's upper floor, while Ghelmer used his hydrokinesis to attempt drowning Miki to death. Fortunately, Akira notices their presence and begins the counterattack. In the hallway Akira meets up with Miki's younger brother, Tare, who is horrified of the sight of his parent's entrapment in the ceiling, so he runs off and locks himself in his room. Akira easily dispatches Agwel by ripping him apart with his antennae, while still in human form. Ghelmer, however, proved to be more difficult since the waters inside Miki's body allowed Ghelmer to control her like a puppet. But, Akira manages to have her spit out the water, then kills Ghelmer by first dehydrating him and then burning him alive. The attacks ultimately proved to be a distraction since Sirene broke into the house through the roof and snatched Akira with her right foot, leaving him to bleed partly over Miki's unconscious body. As they fly above the city, Akira is rendered unable to transform into devilman because of the electrical discharge of Sirene's talons. She reveals that her intention is to have Akira brought before demon lord Zennon, to be tortured for the crime of having taken over Amon's body. Back at the hospital Ryo wakes up from his bed and sneaks out to his car along with a concealed sniper rifle. By some unknown means, Ryo could also sense the demons's presence through some form of extra-sensory perception, much similar to Akira. He makes his way to a radio-tower atop a high-rise, pulls out the sniper rifle and shoots at Sirene twice. This distracts her enough to let go of Akira, thus allowing him to transform partly into his devilman form. In retaliation, Sirene fires her left, detachable claw at Ryo, pinning him against the tower. She then engages Akira into a lengthy battle which spans across half the city skies, time in which Akira turns into his full devilman form. The battle culminates outside of the city, wherein Sirene destroys an entire village. She attempts to impale Devilman with logs shaved into spikes, but he effortlessly stops them. She then summons back her detachable claw, in the form of a buzz-saw, and cleave's Devilman's left arm off and ruptures his stomach. But, Devilman quickly notices that Sirene's antennae were controlling the claw's movements, so he grabs them, leaving her unable to properly control it's direction, resulting in the claw accidentally being thrust into Sirene's abdomen, leaving her gravely wounded. He continues the attack, ripping Sirene's left wing off and chasing her through the forest. Sirene is left without any other options but to call upon Lord Zennon to deliver her more power for victory. The demon lord sends out several demons to distract Devilman, while also sending the demon Kaim to directly assist Sirene in the fight. Although Sirene is skeptical of their success in beating Devilman, Kaim proposes a merging between themselves, his massive body combined with Sirene's deadly moves could possibly overwhelm the enemy. Sirene is staunchly against the merging, pointing out that they would both die from her wounds should they attempt it and her mind becomes the dominat presence, but Kaim has no intention of actually surviving the fight. His only concern was for Sirene to win the battle against Amon, having admired her beauty even if she was blood-stained and grievously wounded. To that end, Kaim decapitates himself with his tail, allowing Sirene to fuse with him. Now having been combined into a centaur-like being, Sirene mounted on Kaim's body lunges at Devilman, blasting him with beams of energy and impaling him on Kaim's horns. The battle ends with Devilman left for dead in a creek, transforming back into Akira Fudo while bleeding away. Sirene stops atop of the ridge over-looking the creek to admire her victory. Akira falls unconscious, not understanding why Sirene isn't pressing on the attack. The following morning, Akira wakes up in the forest and finds Ryo hanging over him and having bandaged his wounds. Akira is scared that Sirene might try to continue her attack and asks about her. Ryo calmly explains that he had placed Akira's arm back onto his shoulder and it seemingly patched itself back to normal. He then points to the Sirene/Kaim body standing perfectly still over the ridge, having apparently fallen onto death standing up. Back at the Makimura residence, Kozo and Akiko Makimura had been detached from he ceiling, alive and without any aparent damage, Miki is still sleeping naked in her bed after Akira had rescued her and Tare had fallen asleep under the covers of his bed, along with the rabbit Snowtail. The OVA ends with a close-up of Sirene's erect corpse, showing that she had died while gleefully soaking in her own Pyrrhic victory. Characters *Akira Fudo: A kind, polite and noble boy in his late teens, when approached by his old friend he is forced to accept his destiny of becoming the Devilman. *Ryo Asuka/Satan: Akira's best friend who was instrumental in Akira's birthing into Devilman, unknown to him he was really the demon lord Satan. *Sirene: A beautiful female demoness with bird like wings, not inherently evil but after the loss of her love Amon she becomes enraged and attempts to kill the one who had wronged her, namely Akira Fudo. *Miki Makimura: The daughter of Akira's adopted parents, she was Akira's best friend after his parents dissipated, and she also had romantic feeling towards him. *Jinmen: A large sadistic demon with horrific powers, able to devour a living creature and have them added to his shell to live out an unending agony until they were fully decomposed. *Kaim: A large armored tank of a demon, and was an example to show that not all demons were evil, in Kaim's case he was in love with Sirene and sacrificed his own life so she had a chance to further on living. *Zennon: A giant, three-headed demon, who rules over several legions of demons and Sirene's superior, providing her with several lesser demons for backup when her fight with Devilman became to intense. *Ghelmer: A powerful and bizarre demon with the ability to manipulate and fuse with water, he assisted Sirene in the attack on the Makimura Home. *Agwel: A small slime like demon who could turn his surroundings tangible and could swallow people whole. *'Koze' and Akiko Makimura: Miki and Kensaku Makimura's parents, who end up being incapacitated by Agwel's ability. They make a brief appearance during the OVA's beginning, middle part and then finally during the ending montage. *Cottonball: a rabbit kitten that Akira had rescued from certain death at the hands of a group of high school delinquents during the first OVA. The rabbit is seen besides Tare in bed, implying that the Makimura's had adopted the rabbit follwing it's families's death. Category:Anime Category:OVA